There’s a certain exuberance to the Full Moon in Aquarius this Sunday that suggests movement, and lots of it. It could be the out that we’ve all been looking for, the “open sesame” that magically creates a door in the brick wall we’ve been hitting for so long.

The Sun in Leo opposite the Moon in Aquarius forms one axis of a mystical rectangle. The crossing axis has Saturn in Libra and Mars in late Virgo in one corner, opposite Jupiter and Uranus in Aries in the other. And so, while this Full Moon isn’t part of the cardinal T-square, it connects with it directly via sextiles and trines — soft aspects that create a path for the blocked energies of oppositions to flow.

Uranus is the ruler of this Full Moon, and he’s less than a day away from an exact opposition with Saturn, the fifth and last pass of this contentious pairing. Uranus is the rebel who bucks convention, the freedom fighter, the innovator, the spark of genius, the awakener.

Saturn, conversely, is the authoritarian, the disciplinarian, the lord of time and the material world, the enforcer of structure and order. With Saturn and Uranus in opposition since Nov. 4, 2008 — Election Day in the United States — many of us have felt solidly stuck, while certain elements in society have become increasingly polarized. The Full Moon in Aquarius provides a release for the pent-up rebellious energies of Uranus.

What will be unleashed? And what will we find on the other side of that door? Many of us are going to experience an awakening of some sort, and that could open the door to solutions that have eluded us so far. Indeed, when we expand our point of view and see problems from a broader perspective, we can come up with creative new ways of solving them.

While the Moon in Aquarius represents detached, cool reason, the Sun in Leo symbolizes the heart, joy, and the celebration of life. It is who we are at our core, where our higher mind shines through us. When the challenges facing us are so tough that we throw our hands up in defeat, that’s often the moment when we break through to the knowledge of who we are and what we’re here for. That, in turn, gives us renewed hope and the will to keep pushing ahead.

Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter form a T-square with Pluto in Capricorn. As I noted in this week’s forecast, we’re on the final ascent to the peak of the T-square, which is at its most powerful during the last week of July and the first week of August. Climbing is hard work, and we’ve got a bit more to go. Hopefully, we’ll be able to rest at the top and take in an awesome view, but I think it’s possible that the awe may have some shock to it.

This also means that the Sun is inconjunct Pluto, which is not a happy arrangement. An informed, knowledgeable, enlightened, and empowered populace is a threat to government corruption and corporate greed.

There is one other opposition in the Full Moon chart, between Mercury in late Leo and Neptune and Chiron in late Aquarius. When those in power are challenged by the truth, the response is often to confuse the situation by overwhelming the public with meaningless facts and to deliberately pit their opponents against each other. Our collective wound makes us susceptible to this kind of cynical manipulation, so it is all the more imperative that we work to heal our hearts and minds.

Venus at 17 degrees Virgo is square Ceres at 21 degrees Sagittarius. I’m not sure how this might play out, but it seems sad, somehow. Venus, the planet of love and desire, is in her fall in Virgo, and the square with Earth Mother Ceres represents a conflict between two archetypal feminine figures. We’ll just have to watch the headlines to figure this one out.

The Sabian Symbol** for the Moon at 2°59′ Aquarius is a deserter from the navy, with the keyword DEFIANCE. For once, Marc Edmond Jones doesn’t need any translation. He wrote, “This is a symbol of human independence carried to a point of extreme rebellion against things as they are, here emphasized in a disregard of all consequence for the sake of immediate liberation of the spirit.” This image might apply equally well to the Saturn-Uranus opposition. Once we awaken to the truth, living under the old rules becomes suffocating, and we’ll take radical steps to extricate ourselves.

For the Sun at 2°59′ Leo, the Sabian Symbol is a woman having her hair bobbed, with the keyword DECISION. When a woman drastically changes her hairstyle, it’s usually because she has gone through a personal transformation. The haircut is a conscious decision, a means of showing the world that she is a different person. What could be more Leo than that?

We’re becoming different people as new doors open in our hearts and minds. I have a feeling we’ll be changing a lot more than just our hair.

Pat

** From The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, by Dr. Marc Edmond Jones. The author, an astrologer, channeled this work in the early 1920s. There’s one symbol one for each degree of the zodiac, and we can use them to gain insight into charts.